DC: Clinical Application of Immersive VR in Spatial Cognition: The Assessment of Spatial Memory and Unilateral Spatial Neglect in Neurological Patients

Visual-spatial impairments and associated cognitive functions are hard to examine by traditional neuropsychological tests, but they have high potential to be examined in an ecologically valid way through the simulation of spatial information provided by immersive Virtual Reality (VR). This PhD research proposes two studies to investigate the clinical applicability and construct validity of immersive VR in neuropsychological rehabilitation: 1) The immersive Virtual Memory Task (imVMT) was developed to examine spatial memory in a broad range of neurological patients. The main purpose was to apply a gesture-based natural hand interaction and to see in how far typical handicaps such as hemiparesis or visual field defects interfere with task performance. On a neuropsychological level, we aim to identify VR parameters which reveal and differentiate underlying cognitive sub-processes. 2) A virtual road crossing task (iVRoad) was developed to detect discrete symptoms of unilateral spatial neglect (USN) in right-hemispheric post-stroke patients. The aims are a) to externally validate iVRoad using conventional neuropsychological tests, b) to identify and evaluate relevant behavioral and eye tracking parameters to distinguish post-stroke patients with and without USN.